I’m Jim Foster. I’ll soon be 78 years old. I was born at what’s called the old Y and O Coal Camp. I grew up here and I’ve lived here all my life except for a brief time when I was in the United States Marine Corps. I grew up until 17 years old, when I went to work at the coal mines and worked about 10 months.  And at the end of that time I went into the Marines. I pulled two years in the Marine Corps and came back and worked in the coal industry then until 1983 when I retired. I retired when I was 55 years old. Three years of that was underground mining - the rest of it was surface. I worked on the preparation plant, work like that.

"But I believe they could mine it better without destroying the environment like they’re doing with mountaintop removal."

I’ve lived in this area all my life, except what time I was in the Marine Corps. I’m the kind of person that has always been proud of my heritage. My father was a coal miner. I had three brothers was coal miners. We worked a total of probably approximately 200 years among us. I feel like the work we done underground coal mining, we needed the coal to produce electricity and stuff that our nation needs. But I believe they could mine it better without destroying the environment like they’re doing with mountain top removal.

When I was just a young man, when I first saw coal mining through strip mining – which was a disaster to me – I’ll never forget what my dad said. He said, “Son, this is the ruination of our state if they allow this strip mining to go on like that. They can’t do that in these mountains and survive.” Which he was true, I knew that. But I’ve said I’m proud my dad didn’t live to see this mountain top removal because if he had, he would absolutely… it would have broke his heart. If he knew it today, he would turn over in his grave.

I believe they can mine the coal and do it underground and not do the damage to the environment like they’re doin’. The only reason they’re doin’ it the way they’re doin’ it with mountain top removal is because they can do it with dynamite and machinery instead of workin’ men. They don’t want to pay men a decent wage to mine the coal – they want to use mountain top removal. The way they’re destroyin’ the mountains here now with this mountain top removal is enough to make anybody cry that can remember what it was like before it was started. When I grew up, just as a young kid, I knew that all the streams here was absolutely unbelievable. I could go out anywhere I wanted to and fish any of the streams. Plenty of fish in it, plenty of wildlife, plenty of game to hunt for. I’ve always been an outdoorsman. My dad started me to huntin’ when I was just a young lad, I’d say twelve or thirteen years old, probably. He taught me the safe way to use guns when I went huntin’.

Showed me how to fish, taught me what he could about the proper ways to fish - the way to fish for different types of fish. And at that time, back when I was just a small kid, this stream here, called Little Coal River, was listed as the best bass stream and fishing stream in the state of West Virginia, and that’s coverin’ a big lot of territory. And it is a fact. I can well remember the fish that was here. Big deep holes of water everywhere you would go! It was unbelievable.

As a matter of fact, right here in the old Y and O Camp where I grew up, there’s a big hollow called Roach’s Branch.  There was thousands of acres of virgin timber in there, never had an axe carried to it. Thousand of acres. And it was absolutely beautiful – you could not believe! Back up in that hollow, there was just a small stream come out of it. There was big holes of water in there that was over my head when I was 13-years-old.  You could catch lots of fish even up in there. Fish that was unbelievable!

But since they’ve started all this strip mining and mountain top removal, all the slides and stuff comin’ off the mountains goes right into the river. It’s got the river beds all filled up. There’s none of those big deep holes left anywhere. The fish is all gone. The only fish we have now is what they usually stock - the state will stock a few trout. And then these coal companies has stocked a few trout, to try to create fellowship among the people. That’s the only reason they do it. They don’t do it because they want us to have them – I’m sure they don’t. 

And there was good huntin’ – ah, finest huntin’ there ever was! Especially grouse huntin’. I loved to grouse hunt when I was a kid. I had an older brother that taught me all the tricks of the trade in grouse huntin.’ And I later grew up to be classified as one of the better grouse hunters.

I know that after I came home out of the Marines there was a lot of people would talk about grouse huntin’. They’d all say, “Get with ol’ Jim Foster and he’ll take you and show you where the grouse is at.” And I had a name bein’ a good grouse hunter, and I really enjoyed the out-of-doors – loved it! 

"Lots and lots of areas that I can remember when I was just a young man, where we used to hunt and fish – it’s all gone. You can’t even get in. There’s areas that they’ve already mined out that’s completely destroyed."

Lots and lots of areas that I can remember when I was just a young man, where we used to hunt and fish – it’s all gone. You can’t even get in. There’s areas that they’ve already mined out that’s completely destroyed. And other areas that you can’t get on to hunt because they’ve got gates. They’ve got you locked out –you can’t go nowhere. And I’d say just give ‘em a few more years and the whole thing, it’s gonna be completely destroyed. It’s on the way out now.

But the way that everything has turned out over the years, when I look back and think about all the good times and everything that’s past behind us, it makes me look back…it brings tears to my eyes at times. And anybody that could call back the days when it was like that, I’m sure they would agree with me. At the rate they’re goin’ now, I’d say in another five or six years from now, practically all this area where we live, it’ll be obsolete.  There won’t be anything left.

There’s a friend of mine that’s a barber down next to Madison that’s at Price Hill, and he was talkin’ about he was approached about some property just above his barber shop. Just to let you know what they’re doin’ to this area through here with strip mining. They wanted to buy that property from him, wanted to put some kind of building in there. He told them he wasn’t interested in sellin’. And they told him, “Well, if you don’t sell, in five years from now there’s not gonna be anything left here, anyway.” And I’d say that they was pretty well speakin’ the truth when they told him there wouldn’t be anything left in five years. 

At the rate they’re goin’ with all the mud slides and the floods and everything they’re causin’, it would be horrible to imagine what it will be five years from now. Because just in the past five years, the changes that’s been made is hard for a lot of people to believe. But I believe every bit of it because I’ve seen it happen. And it’s getting’ worse each year, and it will keep continuin’ to do that until the whole area is completely destroyed.  And it’s sad – it’s really sad to think about. 

So far, I haven’t been flooded, or anything like that. But about every blast that goes off, we can hear the dishes rattle in the cabinets and feel the whole house shake. And I know it has to be doin’ damage, because anybody that’d tell you it doesn’t do damage, they’re foolish. They don’t know what they’re talkin’ about. It would have to do damage.

"One person can’t do anything, but if everybody would open their eyes to the fact of what’s happenin’ and do somethin’, stand up to ‘em, they might listen to ‘em."

One person can’t do anything, but if everybody would open their eyes to the fact of what’s happenin’ and do somethin’, stand up to ‘em, they might listen to ‘em. But the politicians will wait until the whole area is completely destroyed, have another disaster like Buffalo Creek or somethin’. Then after it happens, they’ll come back with some kind of a big deal. These politicians’ll get their heads together and say, “We’ve got to do somethin’ about this.” They will stop some of the destruction that’s goin’ on, but what’s already happened can’t be done away with. It’s already a thing that’s a disgrace to ‘em, but they will make big heroes out of themselves by passin’ laws to outlaw stuff like that -after it’s gone too far.

But that’s the sad part of it. They have to wait ‘til a disaster happens to pass laws to try to do somethin’ about it. Just like the Sago Mines. Just as soon as it happened, they made up new laws and regulations – got them passed without any problem whatsoever. They was willin’ to pass those laws. And they’ll do the same thing on this mountain top removal, after they do enough damage to cause a lot of lives to be destroyed. Then they’ll come out with some big deal to outlaw it, do somethin’ about it real quick, and make heroes out of themselves. But what they ought to do is stop it before it happens. Now that would really be wonderful if they’d do that. But they’ll wait until some kind of a big disaster, and they’ll close out by passin’ laws to outlaw it. And the ones that votes to stop it, they’ll make big heroes out of ‘em.

Will people’s grandchildren live here? That’s a long time down the road. You take 25 years from now, I’d say no, there won’t be anything left here. Nothin’. Course, I’ve lived my life.  I’m thankful that I got to live in this area at the time and grow up.  Because it’s hard for people to even imagine what this place was like back when I was a boy.

But those days is gone forever. It’ll never be the same – it can’t be, because that’s all behind us. But I had the privilege of growin’ up when we really had somethin’ that we could be proud of. And I loved the out-of-doors. That was my main thing, fishin’ and huntin’. I enjoyed it more than anything that I done. And I can just thank the good Lord that I had the privilege of livin’ in that time slot where we had all that. People livin’ today, they’ve never seen any beauty here in this area. It’s all been destroyed – all the beauty’s been destroyed. But give ‘em another five or six years, there won’t be anything left. It’s sad to think about, but that’s just one of the things that I guess the big politicians, the big money people want. They just want to destroy the whole thing before they quit. And they will, they’ll destroy it all.

I don’t care who they are, what they are. Even the President of the United States, I’ll stand up to him and tell him it’s wrong. I don’t care what he says or anybody else says, it’s completely wrong. They can mine this coal a better way, and give a lot more men work. There’d be lots more men employed mining coal, deep mine it, than it would to be destroying the environment like they’re doin’. And they will eventually, on down the road somewhere, see and realize what they’ve done and be ashamed of what they’ve allowed to happen to our state. 

And right now, mountain top removal, the way they’re minin’ this coal, they will take dynamite and machinery and go in and they’ll mine the top of that mountain off. And they have such heavy blasting that it damages all the coal seams down below. If they try to mine that later, the coal is all broke and makes the mine so dangerous as to make it almost impossible to mine that coal. That’s all lost. And I mean that’s millions of tons of coal that’s lost like that because of the way they’re mining that coal with mountain top removal. It just makes it unsafe to try to mine it later after they get through.

Probably after I’m dead and gone they’ll pass on new laws that will outlaw this. I just wish they had done it sooner so that some of the generations that’s comin’ on ahead of me could have a better place to live.